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🇷🇴 Romania /Elections & Politics

Cristian Ghinea reviews Romania’s PNRR results and criticizes the PSD: “They were better at spending money than reforming”

From Adevărul · () Romanian

Translated from Romanian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Analysis Named sources Context piece
  • Former minister Cristian Ghinea said Romania spent about 90% of its PNRR grant allocation, while warning that the plan was overcontracted by as much as 200%.
  • He described the A7 Moldova motorway as the largest single investment in any EU recovery plan, although one section may not be fully completed by the original deadline.
  • Ghinea said health and parts of education faced major losses, with only seven of 26 originally planned hospitals potentially completed.

Cristian Ghinea says Romania’s biggest PNRR success is the A7 Moldova motorway, even though the Bacău-Pașcani section will not be fully completed by the original August 31, 2026 deadline. The former European Funds Minister, who coordinated the plan’s drafting, called A7 “the largest project in the entire European Union, across all the recovery plans.”

Subsequent governments treated the PNRR like Santa Claus’s piggy bank.

· Cristian GhineaHe criticized the overcontracting of Romania’s recovery plan by successive governments.

Ghinea said Romania would not automatically lose all the funding tied to the unfinished motorway section. After negotiations with the European Commission, payment will reflect the project’s completion rate. “If it is 95% complete, you give me 95% of the money. In other words, I lose 5%, not 100%,” he said. He credited the current government’s negotiations with preserving a substantial part of the funding.

His broader assessment was sharply uneven. Around 90% of the grant component has been spent, but Ghinea criticized successive governments for overcontracting the plan. He said the initial allocation of roughly 28 billion to 29 billion euros generated commitments of up to twice that amount, creating expectations that could not be fully covered. “Subsequent governments treated the PNRR like Santa Claus’s piggy bank,” he said in an interview with Libertatea.

The largest project in the entire European Union, across all the recovery plans, is A7.

· Cristian GhineaHe described the Moldova motorway as the plan’s most important achievement.

Ghinea praised the Transport, Development and Education ministries for their work in some areas, but described health as “the ugliest situation.” Of the 2.4 billion euros initially allocated to health, Romania gave up about 1.3 billion, he said. Only seven of the 26 hospitals originally included in the plan may be completed, depending on negotiations with the European Commission.

If it is 95% complete, you give me 95% of the money. In other words, I lose 5%, not 100%.

· Cristian GhineaHe explained how funding would be linked to the motorway’s completion rate after negotiations with the European Commission.

He also pointed to lost funding for agricultural high schools, which he attributed to disagreements between the Education and Agriculture ministries. In rural school campuses, he said, only one project was completed. His comments followed a wider debate over the plan’s implementation, including government cloud arrangements and the absorption rate for non-repayable grants.

The ugliest situation is in health.

· Cristian GhineaHe described the losses and delays affecting health projects under the PNRR.
About this summary

Originally published by Adevărul in Romanian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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